he thought it a fitting occasion for the display of his bullying pleasantry. "Sir," said the Sergeant sternly to the bail: "And pray, sir, how do you make out that you are worth three thousand pounds?" The gentleman stated the particulars of his property up to two thousand nine hundred and forty pounds. "That's all very good," said the Sergeant, "but you want sixty pounds more to be worth three thousand pounds." "For that sum," replied the gentleman, by no means disconcerted, "I have the note of hand of one Mr. Sergeant Davy, and I hope he will have the honesty soon to settle it." The laughter that this reply excited extended even to the Bench; the Sergeant looked abashed, and Lord Mansfield observed, in his usual urbane tone, "Well, Brother Davy, I think we may accept the bail."-Law and Lawyers. Scott [Lord Eldon] kept an anecdote-book. The following story of HILL appears :-" After Sergeant Hill ceased to attend the Courts of Justice as a pleading barrister, he answered cases, and many were laid before him for his opinion. His habit was to write his opinion, and illustrate it, by mentioning all the cases upon which it was founded, with a great deal of reasoning upon each case. With such a fund of information, others as well as myself, who attended in Courts, frequently were enabled to argue cases ably and powerfully; the merit, however, being the Sergeant's. Upon thus being consulted, he looked for what he certainly ought to have had a good fee. A case being laid before him with a fee of one guinea, the opinion he wrote, which I saw, as, I think, in these words (keeping the guinea): ‘I don't answer such a case as this for one guinea. Geo. Hill, Lin. Inn.' Adding year and day." |